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Metro: Last Light is a great dystopian shooter even if it isn't as groundbreaking as its predecessor.

This post is very light on spoilers, but there are minor ones and images from various points throughout the game.

Metro: Last Light is a beautiful looking game. The post-apocalyptic landscape of a nuclear Moscow paints a tragic, lovely scene, and no matter how deadly it may be up on the surface of this blighted planet, I often couldn't help but stop and stare. Developer 4A Games has crafted a visually stunning world that feels more realized and gritty than the overgrown world of Crysis 3.

It's interesting, actually, how easy it is to draw parallels between the two games. A dead world with bad guys at every turn and alien monsters coming at you from all sides. There's even a bald guy who accompanies you through much of both games.

But Metro: Last Light has a far more interesting story to tell, and its cast of characters is more fleshed out and feel more real than their Crysis 3 counterparts. This isn't to say that Metro: Last Light is without storytelling flaws---it has plenty---but its flaws are not so glaring, and the game is richer and deeper for it.

There is no mention of an Alpha Ceph, for instance. The dialogue is never melodramatic. And perhaps most importantly, Artyom is a much more tolerable avatar than Prophet.

The story picks up where Metro 2033 left off. Mostly-silent-protagonist Artyom has destroyed the Dark Ones but now wonders if that was the right call. Is it possible these strange, telepathic aliens (who Artyom alone could communicate with) were not villains, but rather a benign race?

In a world gone mad with poison air, massive winged demons, and other deadly beasts at every turn, did the Rangers mistakenly kill off their only true friends?

News of one surviving Dark One spurs Artyom and his sniper companion Anna to go out looking for the creature, but everything goes terribly wrong, and soon Artyom finds himself mixed up in a three-way political crisis and brewing war between the Nazis, the Communists, and his own people (the Order.)

Once again, you travel the underground metro---a massive, crumbling bomb shelter filled with misery and the pathetic hangings-on of humanity, crowded together in their shabby settlements.

You learn quickly that although the monsters in the tunnels and on the surface are brutal, fiendish creatures, the real monsters are your fellow men. Maybe even you.

You also find yourself trading for ammo and guns and poking around the nooks and crannies of the various settlements you encounter. There are mini-games like betting on your shooting acumen and, rather less tastefully, paying for a topless lap dance (one of the most uncomfortable moments I've ever experienced in a video game, honestly.)

Indeed, women are largely treated poorly in Metro: Last Light. I'd argue they're presented in a way that goes beyond the (perhaps) intended realism: that such a world would undoubtedly be unkind to women goes without question; then again, I doubt breast implants would be terribly common here either.

Even Anna, a hardcore sniper who at first discounts Artyom as a noob, a rookie, is treated to a sex scene largely featuring her half-exposed, physics-defying, breasts.

There's nothing wrong with sex in a game, but the sex (and stripping) on display here is childish---a poor fit for an otherwise pretty interesting game. It's not a fantasy comic game where everyone is simply drawn to absurd proportions---it's a serious shooter that trades in pretty interesting themes and ideas. It's too bad that, sexually at least, it comes off as so juvenile.

(4A Games is a Ukranian developer, by the way. When Poland-based CD Projekt RED took flack for their own sexual immaturity in the first Witcher they discounted criticism as American prudishness at play. Maybe it is, but I personally believe a game can have plenty of sex and nudity and do it in a way that isn't quite so crass. I'm all for more sex in games (games have plenty of violence but not enough sex and rock-and-roll) but the stuff in Metro: Last Light is lowest-common-denominator material, not up to par with the rest of the game.)

Eye candy aside, the game is mostly about bad people doing bad things when given the opportunity. I won't go into great detail on the plot. The Nazis and the Communists are both pretty much straight-up evil (which is to be expected) though one of your chief antagonists manages to be a great deal more interesting than your stereotypical mustachioed villain.

Level-wise, the game is linear but open to exploration. This works pretty well in a story-driven game. There are different approaches to different problems, and levels, while not open world, are still open enough to give you some room to maneuver.

In the Metro itself you find yourself gunning your way through buildings and tunnels, and at times going further down into some seriously spooky catacombs. The atmosphere is diabolical.

There aren't any really great "jump out of your seat" moments, unfortunately, but the game does a great job playing with light and shadow and sound. It's deeply creepy stuff, even if most of the spelunking is resolved with a gun.

The game alternates not just between over-land and underground, but between mostly human foes and mostly monster foes in any given stage. This leads to two very different approaches to combat.

In the depths, you'll want to preserve your ammo as best you can. It's not hard to run out when you're unloading clip after clip into a horde of monsters. There's nothing subtle about fighting these beasts.

You'll find ammo in the depths, but since monsters don't drop any, it's more rare than the looting-frenzy you'll partake in after killing your fellow men.

On a side note, ammo scarcity can be really absurd at times, and frightfully imbalanced.

One fight against a particularly large water monster happened to come when I was basically all out of ammo. The ammo available was barely enough to get me through the fight and the ammo I found nearby was for the two types of gun I didn't have (there are five, and five different types of ammo, though you can only carry three weapons at a time.)

I can appreciate using scarcity as a device to create tension and make players work at it, but getting stuck at one boss fight simply because you only have ammo for the wrong guns is annoying.

In human-populated areas, on the other hand, you have the option to sneak your way through most (though not all) stages.

In the depths, you'll want a light on at all times (or night vision) but in human-occupied areas, you'll blow out every lamp, shut down every power source, and put as many of your enemies in the dark as possible. As I wandered through settlements I had to fight off the urge to go snuff out each light source, so habitual had that act become.

Playing stealthily allows Artyom to sneak up and kill or incapacitate enemies, and if you do it right you can get through whole areas without a gunfight (though on several occasions I screwed up and had to kill the old fashioned way.)

I do wish that the game's mechanics better reflected its stealth focus. The enemy's line of sight---in the dark, displayed by a cone of light from headlamps---worked well, but there wasn't a lot on the player end you could do other than crouch and hide behind stuff. True, you could carry a silenced pistol and use throwing knives to take out enemies quietly from a distance, but simple things like being able to lean out from behind a corner would have helped a lot.

Impressively, the enemy AI is not entirely stupid. Once on high alert they don't just mosey on back to business as usual.

One other nice thing about the combat was the fact that no gun was a dud. A pistol was often as effective as any other weapon, and while customization itself is fairly limited, I enjoyed figuring out which weapon combination (and what sort of barrel, scope, etc.) worked best for me. No RPG elements either, which I count as a feature not a bug.

Throughout the game you are rarely alone. One companion or another is with you. Not always, but most of the time. This makes for some interesting dialogue (or monologue really, since Artyom is the quiet type) but it comes at the cost of some of the game's horror tension.

Other small quibbles: I'm getting tired of finding notes and audio logs in games. Sure, it helps tell the story but there must be some way to tell the story that doesn't require me to press a button and then read something. I liked BioShock Infinite's little black and white history movies a lot, but I wasn't terribly fond of the audio logs. In Metro: Last Light I prefer learning about the world through observation.

There are heartbreaking moments in the settlements. Parents telling their children gentle lies; a man searching hopelessly for insulin for his wife; a woman wondering where her husband is or a little girl asking for their mother. This is a game about a broken world full of shattered lives.

In one hallucination---Artyom is prone to visions---children play in a park. As the world flashes back to its wasteland reality you hear it: the sound of a baby crying that's as chilling as anything else in the game.

Ultimately, this is a tragedy: a story of guilt and loss and the terribleness of mankind (but also glimpses of its goodness and sacrifice). There are two endings, neither of which I will spoil.

Suffice to say that while the beginning of the game was mildly interesting, I found myself more and more captivated by the story as it progressed. But even so, the game did little to rekindle my interest in the FPS genre as a whole.

On the Buy/Hold/Sell rating I'd say definitely Buy if you liked the first game.

If you're burnt out on first-person shooters, however, Metro: Last Light probably won't do enough to win you back over to the dark side.

It's a very good game with admirable scope and ambition and some of the darkest and most fantastic atmosphere I've encountered in a shooter since...Metro 2033, I suppose. But beyond the gothic world and some fun stealth, it really doesn't bring anything truly new to the table.

If you're in that camp, I say Hold for a Steam sale. But definitely don't miss it.